The Museum of Ethnography's exhibitions and programs tour the country

The Museum of Ethnography in Budapest is going on a tour: its exhibitions, its public programs for adults and children, its professional workshops, and projects supporting various museums and cultural institutions will be visiting many locations across the country in the coming months as part of the Petőfi Cultural Program. The national series of programs is supported by the Ministry of Culture and Innovation as part of the National Institute of Culture's Regional Cultural Services Model Program.  As a result, the knowledge preserved in the Museum of Ethnography is now available in even the smallest villages, in both a professional and experiential way!

The series of programs started at the beginning of February in Lovászpatona, one of the nearly 70 locations where the Museum of Ethnography will organize various events over the next six months. The program Ráismersz? – Néprajzi helytörténeti klub (Do you recognize it? - Ethnographic local history club) aims to explore, collect, and record the local and regional characteristics of the community through the main themes of ethnography (farming, crafts, lifestyle, folk customs, etc.), using examples from the museum's collections, with the involvement of the ethnographic museum's experts.

The next event, on 21 February, was A kulturális örökség digitalizálását és reprodukálását támogató workshop (Workshop to support the digitization and reproduction of cultural heritage). Participating institutions and cultural professionals are given a comprehensive introduction to the possibilities of digital processing of cultural assets, based on practical demonstrations. A mobile studio, provided by the Museum of Ethnography, is set up on-site, and demonstrates the digitization of artifacts of different materials, extent, and surface, based on the partner institution's collection objects. In addition to artifact photography, the technology of reproducing flatbed documents and archival materials (images, documents, negatives) is also demonstrated.

The next session is Digitális tartalmak közzététele, hasznosítása, alkalmazása workshop (Publishing, Exploitation and Use of Digital Content workshop) which aims to help communities and individuals to share digitized photographs and other collection content with local communities and municipalities, and to give examples of how to build an online community with free solutions, based on the Museum of Ethnography's collection database and social media practices.

The Mozgóképre örökítve (Captured on film) is a program based on the film and photo collection of the Museum of Ethnography, the award-winning films of the Stana Ethnographic Film Festival, and recent footage made by staff.

The Ismerd meg és alkosd újra! Hagyományos mintakincsből új motívum (Get to know and recreate it! - New Motifs from Traditional Patterns) traveling exhibition focuses on Hungarian folk decoration and its contemporary use, with the help of a new digital application. Exciting displays of objects and drawings from the museum give visitors a general idea of the decorative arts of the Carpathian Basin and a background knowledge of their history. Thematic and geographical presentations will also provide a history of a particular decoration or motif.

The Az Istennel talállak, testvérem! Cigány történetek / Devlesa arakhavtu, phrala! Romane historiji ( I find thee with God, my brother! Gypsy stories/ Devlesa arakhavtu, phrala! Romane historiji) traveling exhibition features the hardly known photographs, manuscripts, tape recordings, and stories of the legendary researcher "the blonde gypsy", Kamill Erdős (1924-1962), ethnographer and linguist, who "went in disguise" in gypsy communities. Although the exhibition deals with a number of ethnographic themes (weddings, lamentations, beliefs, traditional crafts), it focuses not on ethnographic objects but on people, on the diversity of human relationships through contemporary photographs. Through the photographs and the stories that accompany them, the relationships between Gypsy and Gypsy, Gypsy and non-Gypsy, and Gypsy and Gypsy and Gypsyism are sensitively drawn out.

The Múzeumi szakmai munkát támogató workshopok (Workshops to support the museums’ professional work) is a workshop targeting those museums, exhibition spaces and regional museums that cannot employ a communications or social media specialist and cannot provide dedicated resources for this task. The workshop held by the Museum of Ethnography provides participants with methods to increase the visibility of their activities and programs on social media and online, as well as useful advice for successful press communication.

The project also presents A népi türelemüvegen innen és túl – interaktív néprajzi pavilon szabadtérben (The folk patience bottle and beyond - an interactive ethnographic pavilion) an interactive structure that can be set up in open spaces (squares, courtyards), which analyses four ethnographic themes related to the patience bottles: costume and motif, occupation, church, and play. Its shape, its large floor-to-ceiling dimensions, and its exciting interior design make it an experiential and playful way of learning, both individually and in groups. It uses an immersive approach and unconventional tools to promote learning, promote our cultural values, and help strengthen local community identity.

In addition, the Museum of Ethnography will continue to expand and extend its Heritage Protection Program. Within the framework of this program, the Museum of Ethnography will support the conservation activities of the collections of licensed museum institutions through professional training, expert advice, and equipment loans. It coordinates and trains the activities of the network of conservation officers in all the counties as well as planning and implementing preventive conservation projects.